Read the book a good few years before seeing the film on a pirate vid. Remember being slightly annoyed with the slightly cartoony nature of the movie; maybe it was just the presence of McDowell but the whole thing reminded me of those surreal satires he used to make with Lindsay Anderson in the 70s. It all seemed a bit cranked up, whereas Kubrick films are ususally more restrained.

Also the film skips the last chapter of the book, which is where Burgess resolves all its moral issues.

Got a pirate vid in 95.

It's not one of Kubrick's best- I thing Patrick Magee grossly overacts and it is a bit slow in places. There are still scenes of sheer genius however.

Saw a pirate copy back in the 80s sometime, then about 18 months ago a cousin of mine brought me back a copy from Amsterdam at great personal risk. It was re-released about six months later. Doh.

The film is absolutely bloody infuriating, precisely because it is so "cranked up". I won't go into it all here, but there are so many places where one of Burgess' reasonably subtle touches is replaced by Kubrick with a gratuitous sexual reference, for no good reason (other than that it was the 70's, when you were apparently supposed to do that sort of thing). In the book, Alex kills the old lady with a bust of Beethoven; in the film, he kills her with an enormous alabaster penis. In the book, the gang invade the writer's home wearing masks of poets and composers. In the film, they're wearing big penises on their faces. ('Cos, you know, we wouldn't have understood about composers and that. Cheers, Kubrick, you patronising cunt.) In the book, the gang come across their arch-rivals about to rape a ten-year-old girl, who is screaming but still fully clothed. In the film, she's eighteen, voluptuous, and completely naked. Yes, there are still flashes of genius in the film, but I can't forgive the fact that Burgess's essay on morality became a Michael Winner-sploitation flick.

The book is infinitely better than the film.

RHC:
Anyone cranked up to the gills on expectation floss is just going to be monumentally disappointed in how outlandishly 70s this film is. It's even got Dave Prowse pretending to be really atrong...
The only films you watch these days that have the same moral compass and production design as Orange are 60s/70s super soft porn.
Yeah, it's an intesting film but, when I saw a US DVD a few years back, I felt I'd have enjoyed it more had it not been such a big "forbidden" deal, just some respected 70s flick.
Remember, this film was only ever banned in the UK, and for reasons more to do with tabloid hysteria and authorial chickenshit than actual content. It was shown without fuss everywhere else in the world.
It can't be THAT shocking, RHC. Fear not.

I *still* haven't seen the film, but I went to see the Northern Stage adaptation just before summer break.
It was really good, although not what I'd class as enjoyable, due to the content.
The production used a lot of dance and movement as well as film to convey the story. It was very effective.
Would be nice to see the film so I could draw comparisons...

Stanley Kubrik closed the Scala for showing this. Even Dr. Strangelove cannot make me forgive him that.

>Saw a pirate copy back in the 80s sometime, then about 18 months ago a cousin of mine brought me back a copy from Amsterdam at great personal risk. It was re-released about six months later. Doh.

So, yours has the Dutch subtitles too? Hardly a great risk. Just buy it at the airport. I think I even claimed the cost of mine back on expenses...

Available to buy on DVD & Video next Monday, 13 Nov.

The thing about the original book is that it is one of a number of novels that Burgess wrote in a hurry in 1963 (or thereabouts) simply because he had been wrongly diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour, and thought he only had a year left to write enough potboilers to support his widow. He wanted to knock out 5 books, but only manged 3 in the end. Still, 'Clockwork Orange' only took a few weeks, and he never bothered revising it much.

It was quite celebrated at the time, and he got interviewed on 'Tonight' about it. He was angry with the US edition (1) for omitting the last chapter (it should have 21 chapters, to reflect Alex coming to maturity), and (2) for including a glossary of nadsat words at the start.

Later on Burgess got involved in the debate about the film, and he satirised it in his later novel "The Clockwork Testament". This was in his sequence of novels about a writer called Enderby, and in the book Enderby has to go on TV to defend some notorious book he's written. I've only read a bit of the 1st Enderby novel so I don't know the rest of the details.

The opening line of Burgess' novel "Earthly Powers" is quite celebrated, and Mark Thomas once did a routine quoting it. The one about leaving a catamite on your birthday to go and see the archbishop, or however it goes.

Burgess also had trouble with translators. In his memoirs, he complains that one of his novels mentions people who "go down with DTs". In Italian, this became "fellate Doctors Of Theology". Dunno if he got it corrected before it was printed.

In the 1990 RSC play, a beggar (who looks like Kubrick) comes on and starts whistling 'Singin in the Rain'. Some droogs then kick the shit out of him.

Helpful and disturbing, God this is going to be easy to write about...

The best thing it to read the screenplay, or get the book that's basically a collection of outtakes from the film in paperback, really good intro. Like a vid on paper.

That poor sod was born and lived in Bicester, no wonder he went bonkers. Used to drive his car standing up at the wheel shouting into the wind, with his missus by his side; a very wild, very misunderstood man. A teacher, if I'm not mistaken. Also, Burgess' real name was summit like Wilson wasn't it?

I don't think he ever changed his name.

He did have to change the setting of one of his novels from Malaya (where he'd lived) to East Africa (where he'd never been) at the last minute, because his publisher got cold feet about it, however.

I think his real name was John Anthony Burgess Wilson, or some such permutation.